Axes'n'Yarn

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

“Britain is open for business.”
this is a phrase that comes up again and again in the media, either
as a cliché from journalists or a direct soundbite from an MP. It is
usually linked to economic reports that show growth in the UK
economy, or a piece of legislation that makes international trade
easier (or less regulated) is going ahead. The emphasis is that the
UK is a company and that that company is profitable. ...

This
is where I start to really stretch the metaphor. I want you to
picture an actual physical marketplace: perhaps your town has an
indoor market or a weekly produce market. I'll be keeping St George's
Market in Belfast in mind throughout this. Now lets start thinking
about what makes a good market and how that applies to national
economics. Just trust me and go along for the ride.

Safe and secure

A good market is somewhere where stall holders can leave their
merchandise overnight and be relatively confident that it will still
be there in the morning. During trading they don't expect to
experience much in the way of stock loss, or other significant crime.
They know that, should something be stolen or they are assaulted or
any other crime is committed that market staff and security will help
deal with the issue appropriately.

The same goes for people visiting a market. They don't want to be
mugged, or pick-pocketed. They don't want to be harassed or
assaulted. They don't want to have a stall-holder overcharge them,
refuse to give them change or steal their bank details (it's 2015,
markets have card readers). Should anything happen we want to be sure
that security or the police are involved, that our complaints are
listened to with care and diligence and that appropriate measures
will be taken. In the case of a stall-holder committing a crime
against a customer that may be a criminal charge but it may also
include a ban on future trading.

The
UK market place has a police force, a criminal justice system and a
legislature that includes dozens of regulating bodies, especially
when you start taking in to account local authorities. Now I was
raised to be fairly pro police and I have to say, by and by that
confidence remains. I am aware however, that for certain groups of
people and for certain crimes,policing
and justice aren't always carried out fairly. Young black men for
example are more likely to be stopped and searched than any other
group. In fact racism in the UK criminal system is well reported and
documented if you want to go and read about it. In more recent years
this has extended to Asian men, and people who are not UK nationals.
There are also certain crimes which are not treated with the
sensitivity or even handedness they should be: rape and sexual
assault have some shocking statistics regarding how many cases are
taken to trial, how many end in prosecution and the length of prison
sentences handed down. Rape is also one of the few crimes were the
burden of proof falls so heavily on the shoulders of the victims and
there is an uphill struggle to even convince police that a crime has
been committed.
Policing and justice is clearly not as fair and even as it could be.

Then there are other parts of the legislature: banking regulation,
taxation, welfare and social security, wage and employment law,
immigration law (relating to the above section on diversity) which
are skewed to benefit a very small percentage of the population and
to cripple the rest. To shun, marginalise, refuse to help and at
times actively hurt large parts of your market in order to benefit a
small few. Is that actually leading to a successful market or is that
leading to a market which can't be sustained whilst a few
stallholders walk away smiling (with the credit card details of their
unrepresented customers).

Friday, 1 May 2015

In which I stretch a metaphor as far as possible.

“Britain is open for business.” this is a phrase that comes up
again and again in the media, either as a cliché from journalists or
a direct soundbite from an MP. It is usually linked to economic
reports that show growth in the UK economy, or a piece of legislation
that makes international trade easier (or less regulated) is going
ahead. The emphasis is that the UK is a company and that that company
is profitable.

I
have issues with this premise and consequently, every time that
hackneyed line is rolled out I find myself on the phone ranting to
somebody, usually my poor beleaguered father. In my opinion,
expecting a country, even a western capitalist country like the UK,
to function as a business is fundamentally wrong. It is this drive
for profit, for pleasing investors and stakeholders and putting
coffers ahead of people that leads to spending cuts, service cuts,
privatisation, right wing and socially conservative rhetoric. When
your key measure of success is how “healthy” the bank balance is,
all sorts of other markers will be ignored.

“Britain Open for Business” means that we treat the country as a
business and the populace as workers with no real function other than
to serve the profit of the country. If the profit margins are not big
enough then the workers, us, the citizens, will be sacrificed as cuts
are made in the name of efficiency.

But
is profit, economic growth and a national bank balance really the
best or only way of measuring the success of a nation?
In short, no it isn't. So let's examine this metaphor.

Being
open for business, a nation trading as a company is based in free
market economics, the very backbone of western capitalist government.
It is nice and neat to think about the country as a single business
entity that opens its
doors, trades
and then balances the books at the end of the day.
However, that's not how a market works. Not a money market, not the
stock market, not a traditional farmer's market. It's also not how
the country works. Whatever the size and scope of a market there are
many different elements that can dictate its success or failure. If a
CEO or board member of a FTSE company is exposed in a drug scandal,
the company’s
shares will take a knock and the whole balance of trading on the
stock market might
shift. Yet recreational cocaine use has little to do with product
quality or unit sales?

So
instead of thinking in terms of a country as
a single business, why not think of
it
in terms of the market as a whole being ready for business. The UK
itself is a marketplace, and actually, that's what economists really
mean when they make this statement. The UK as a place were other
countries and international companies can feel confident trading.
Where people and their businesses will be happy to spend their money
and in doing so will enrich the UK.

This
is where I start to really stretch the metaphor.
I want you to picture an actual physical marketplace: perhaps your
town has an indoor market or a weekly produce market. I'll be keeping
St George's Market in Belfast in mind throughout this. Now lets start
thinking about what makes a good market and how that applies to
national economics. Just trust me and go along for the ride.

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

I was asked today if I had a boyfriend.
I answered no. I would have answered no regardless of my relationship
status the reason being, quite simply, that I can't abide the term.
Following a long term relationship I vowed that I would never have a
boyfriend or conversely be somebodies 'girlfriend' again. This wasn't
a vow to singledom, a bitter casting off of relationships, this was
simply that I had the opportunity to start fresh with how I
approached and understood relationships. Part of that was eschewing
the X-friend terminology. It's a term I have loathed for years and I
am determined not to fall into the easy habits of using it again. Let
me talk you through why.

Girls and boys or men and women

First and foremost, I find it to be
infantising. I'm not a girl any more; I'm an adult, a woman. The
people I choose to have relationships with are also adults. Our
relationships are adult. I don't want to have a romantic or sexual
relationship with a child, with a little boy or a little girl. I want
to have a relationship with a peer. Yes ages may vary, and maturity
isn't necessary defined by the chronological age of a person, but I
still want to be confident that I can describe my relationship as an
adult one. A relationship without boys or girls.

Just 'girls' and 'boys'?

You can have a girlfriend and you can
have a boyfriend. What about if you are a person who is gender queer,
gender neutral or intersex? What if you are in a relationship with
somebody who doesn't fit neatly into that gender binary. When common
terminology like girlfriend and boyfriend is used it excludes a whole
host of people and their relationships.

“This is my genderqueerfriend.”
doesn't quite roll of the tongue, and gives the impression that it is
an asexual, aromantic relationship. You know, a friendship.

The “friends” thing

The X-friend terminology carries with
it the implication that you can only be friends with somebody of the
'opposite' gender if you are also in a romantic and/or sexual
relationship with them. This reinforces stereotypes that men and
women, or girls and boys, are different, two discreet groups that are
to different to mingle freely.

You will occasionally hear 'girlfriend'
being applied to platonic female/female friendships (a generally
American usage I believe); I don't think I have ever heard boyfriend
being applied to a male/male platonic relationship. Likewise who
would use boy/girlfriend to apply to a platonic hetero relationship?
Further confusion comes when we realise that this also relies on
heteronormative preconceptions of relationships which may vary by
culture; a man referring to a boyfriend is almost certainly going to
be considered in a homosexual relationship where as a woman referring
to her girlfriend may be in a homosexual romantic relationship or a
platonic friendship depending on the prevailing culture.

Non-traditional relationship structures

The standard relationship structure in
the UK is one of long term monogamy; for many individuals though, that
simply isn't the structure that works for them. Polyamory, open
relationships and other forms of non-monogamy are becoming
increasingly accepted and explored relationship structures as people
try and find away of having relationships that satisfies their needs and
doesn't end in divorce or long periods of uncomfortable compromise.
Girl/boyfriend are terms that have been around for over a century and
have almost exclusively (especially in the latter half of the 20th
C) been used to refer to ones monogamous romantic partner. As soon as
you move away from that two person relationship dynamic, language
becomes even more complex. The term isn't easily or comfortably
applied to some romantic and/or sexual partners without considering
how you label all individuals in the arrangement. If you have
different types of relationship with different people, a single term
might not fit all yet you risk alienating or hurting individuals by
applying the term to one and not to another. This is multiplied when
the public perception of a word carries significance that is at odds
to your own personal situation.

[Of course a majority of people are
perfectly happy with long term monogamy, have no qualms about making
it work and have no need or desire to explore other formats. That's
cool, I'm just looking at other groups for this particular point.]

Alternative language

This is where I fall apart somewhat:
trying to find a suitable alternative for a word firmly lodged in my
and other's lexicon.

Partner – it is delightfully gender
neutral, contains more gravitas than boy/girlfriend, and is
reasonably malleable to fit different situations. The problem is I
find it a little to serious and stolid, not really suiting more
casual relationships and flirtations. It still has the baggage of
long term monogamy attached which doesn't suit all. It's just a
little too business like and formal for my tastes.

Lover – A term that makes me cringe
somewhat with it's kitschy undertones and suggestion of
illicit boardroom affairs. But it is gender neutral and is free from
the bounds of traditional relationship structures and less heavy and
demanding than 'partner'. That means of course that it's less heavy
and demanding than partner, perhaps not feeling right for a more
committed relationship.

Paramour – Bizarrely I find this less
kitschy than lover, though it still has many of the same pros and
cons. It is somewhat sweater than lover, and for me doesn't have the
association with an illicit affair.

Beau – My main issue with this is
that I never really know how to pronounce it. It is a term I am most
familiar with being applied to younger people, and thus risks
becoming slightly more childish, not categorised as a 'real'
relationship. That being said it is pleasingly neutral (though I
believe is intended to refer to a male partner) with an affection
that is lacking from love and partner.

That's it, those are the only
alternatives I can think of and none are quite satisfactory. I'm wary
of creating entirely new words. Yes I understand that that's how
language develops but the intentionally created word often seems
trite and forced – compersion a word created by the poly community
to cover the pleasure you take in one of your partners enjoying
another relationship is an example of this; lovely definition, yet
the word leaves me utterly cold.

The other question to ask is do we need
these labels and terms at all, can the ubiquitous boy/girlfriend be
ditched in a mass slewing of definitions, labels and terms. Well
maybe, perhaps we can focus more on describing the individual and the
personal nature of the relationship and try not to fit into the boxes
defined by particular words. The fact remains however, that sometimes
we want an easy, simple and compact word or phrase for ease of
communication and that those words can be a part of the relationship
itself.

I am loathe to produce a piece that
complains about an issue without offering a viable solution but the
fact remains that as of yet, I don't have one. All I am sure of is
that I don't want to be your girlfriend.

Friday, 28 November 2014

Today I have a guest post from Mark Tynan. Inspired by an editorial in the guardian last week (Nov. 18th) Mark wrote a reply, a 202 word scathing assessment of professional football, the UK banking system and our favourite former PM.The Guardian decided not to print. I felt (with Mark's permission) that it really should be read by more than three people.

The Guardian chooses to make professional football the subject of an editorial

My observation is that that status is ill-deserved. To adopt a phrase used by she-who-shall-not be-named, why give football, in its modern guise, the 'oxygen of publicity'? No longer a game nor a sport, football is now just a business.

The
editorial makes no mention of 'the beautiful game', there is no mention
of players, their ball-skills inspiring a new generation of would-be
international stars. No, the stand-out words and phrases are 'lawyers',
'corruption','large debt' and 'global farce'.

How
sorry is it that our 'national game' now has more in common with
banking than actual sport, a situation, I feel, which was summed-up last year by a club waiting overnight to make the announcement of the
sacking of its manager, a Mr Moyes I believe, until the opening of the
New York Stock Exchange?!

'Global farce' is an
understatement. Football, mired in greed and corruption, and burdened
with a generation of professional players who are better actors than
they are footballers, has become a laughing-stock. Cricket and Rugby
Union take heed! Down that road, evil lies!

Sincerely

Mark Tynan

The observant of you will notice that the author of this an I share a surname. Mark is indeed father though I think any bias I have toward is writing is outweighed by the quality.

Wednesday, 26 November 2014

The previous post gave a summary
of how thought bubble was supportive of different genders and age
groups and gave a generally welcoming atmosphere. I thought that, in
order to be complete, I should address a few of the other areas
mentioned namely, accessibility for people with physical,
developmental or neurological disabilities.

I have some physical disabilities and
on tough days walk with as stick. I had my stick with me on the day
and found accessibility for me was very good. Each of the main rooms had level access or gentle ramps to get in to them and had no
steps once inside. The greeting room (where you paid, picked up your
wristband, maps and program) had a number of steps at the front
which surprised me a little but, I later realised (by seeing a woman zoom past me on her motorised chair) that there was also
a gentle ramp up to the entrance so it was accessible to people in
wheelchairs and those who can't navigate steps. This was excellent. I
noted that there were actually a number of people using canes,
crutches or in wheelchairs, both of the powered variety and self
propelled. At no point did I see any of these people struggling to
navigate the convention though I can not personally attest to how
easy it was for people in chairs to reach the tables and exhibitors.
The aisles were wide enough to pass down easily and without me
feeling like I was an obstruction, though the sheer volume of people
did mean I got jostled or my stick knocked a few times. I don't think
that could really be fixed without having absolutely enormous spaces
between things. I was happy to deal with the odd jostle though it
might be a difficultly for other people.

These little spaces between tables (carefully marked with an x) were great for standing out of the way.

Monday, 24 November 2014

and a review of Thought Bubble

Two weeks ago I went to Thought Bubble:
Leeds' dedicated comic convention and part of a bigger festival of
comic art and writing. I had been to comic conventions before: great
jumbles of artists, stands, merchandise, games and anime. To be quite
frank I hadn't enjoyed these experiences. The halls were too busy and
without focus; I felt like a outsider, not knowledgeable enough about
comics anime or games; I was older than the other clientèle, female,
and not cosplaying. It was a world that was difficult for me to
access.

Thought Bubble, I was told, was
different. For starters, rather than the mishmash of everything from
games to anime with comics thrown in there in the middle Thought
Bubble was about comics and only about comics. OK it covered all
aspects of this media from self published zines to big publishing
houses and graphic novels but the core was still the telling of stories
through printed art and words. There was only going to be the one
subculture for me to deal with.

More than that, they said, Thought
Bubble was, from day one, designed to be inclusive; accessible to
anybody regardless of gender, age, ability or disability, whether
they were life long fans of comics or turning the page for the first
time. This was the real charm: a comic con that I could go to and
feel safe and not excluded. I was impressed that a con would be
organised in this manner, that the managers and staff that ran it
went in to it with conscious aim of not discriminating against, in
fact actively supporting, many groups of people.

I was told of policy regarding sexism
and gender issues – those comic artists who were overtly
discriminatory in their drawings or views simply weren't invited.
Booth girls weren't a feature. People who used discriminatory
language would be asked to leave. The organisers made sure to provide
facilities for people with physical or neurological disabilities
including quiet areas, gender neutral toilets and easy access to
event halls. This sounded incredible but I was dubious about how it
actually worked in practice.

Sunday, 16 November 2014

I was shown a video a few days ago
called "Letting Beauty Speak'. It is produced by Cross Fit
International and it wants to redefine beauty. The definition the
video highlighted brought me to tears. It was an unexpected yet quite
profound reaction and it is something I want to address.

Let me get this stated right now:

I like Cross Fit. I have no problem
with CrossFit or with those people who do it (in general). I like the
enthusiastic approach to being fit and healthy. I love seeing my
friends so happy when then have achieved something new. I also think
that 'organisations' and communities like Cross Fit are really good
in supporting and encouraging people more than just a call to go to
the gym. Many people thrive with that sort of communal approach to
achieving a goal.

So, are with clear, I have no problem
with Cross Fit.

Back to the core of this post: why a
video redefining beauty that explicitly pushed against the usual
media standards of beauty left me distressed. You may not care about
my distress itself, but I would hope you care about questioning the
media definition of beauty.

When I saw the title of the video I was
keen to watch. I am very pro health and fitness, and even more
supportive of things that de-construct media-pedalled 'traditional'
concept of beauty and attractiveness; I wanted to see how a group of
people I respect viewed beauty. I wanted to know their answer to the
question ''what is beauty?''.

About Me

Currently in Leeds. Currently filling my time with bureaucracy and daft projects. Currently have black and blonde hair. Occasionally wears pretty dresses. Sometimes looks vintage. Often wears boots. Currently has knitting and a bayonet within easy reach.